American Dream?! 🐻🇺🇸

After my exciting days on Kauai, I continued to California. This was the cheapest flight connection from the island to the mainland, and once I'm there, why not take the opportunity to explore?! So let's go!

Since I knew that my dear friend Chris Pohl has relatives there, I asked him if I could stay with them for a few days, and it worked out right away! Once again, a wonderful coincidence and the hospitality amazed me once again, because his cousin, Linh, didn't hesitate for a second and said yes right away. How kind!

Yes - you have high expectations when you hear about the big cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, or San José. I had them too and was super excited to experience everything there. After the camping days, it was a dream to live in an apartment again. Linh really offered me something great there. However, after the outdoor showers, I was already overjoyed to have a hot shower!

And then it started: little Pauli travels through the big, world-famous cities! It was so incredibly impressive to see everything, and each city had something special about it. Let the pictures speak for themselves. Again, I want to show you my time with these pictures and not talk so much about them, but just write small comments about them:

Stanford & Palo Alto, 03.03.2018

The avenue was simply lined with palm trees, so beautiful! Plus, the sunset a little later.. that gave me a real California feeling!

San Francisco, 04.03.2018

Santa Cruz, 05.03.2018

San José, 09.03.2018

Los Angeles, 12&13.03.2018

But why do I question this American Dream in my headline? The pictures are so dreamy and seem to represent a seemingly perfect time!

That's a good question because as beautiful as it looks in the pictures, it wasn't particularly enjoyable for me overall.

There are many reasons for this, here are some of them:

Safety:

Safety is always a big topic for me, especially when you're traveling alone, you have to be even more careful. Now follows something probably surprising: I felt the most unsafe during my entire trip in California. You can hardly believe it, right?! You would think that it's safe in the 1st world country USA. At least safer than in countries like Indonesia or India. But no, my feeling told me otherwise. I really felt very uncomfortable on the streets all the time. This was because there were incredibly many homeless people walking around. Life in the USA is incredibly expensive! In principle, that's no reason to feel unsafe, but these people were mostly mentally very confused. There were also many junkies whom you could tell were in a miserable state. Lastly, I talked to some former junkies in my hostel in Los Angeles, who now only use weed. Daily. Starting at 10 a.m. And then they asked me if I wanted some too. I politely declined.

You don't really feel comfortable and safe there, right?

That was really shocking to me in such a highly developed country.

Loneliness:

Somehow it was incredibly difficult for me to make contacts in California. On the one hand, because I was a bit isolated in Linh's apartment, and on the other hand, because things like Couchsurfing are simply not as popular there. I also had the feeling that most people were not open enough to make new contacts and were generally not very interested in others. Selfish thinking. Only yourself counts. Not to mention what Linh told me, which confirmed almost everything. She always said to me, "You do your thing, and I'll do mine." All conversations were very superficial, and when you needed help, hardly anyone was willing to help. (Really unbelievable when I compare it to my experiences in Mexico.. but more about that in the next post!) It was really uncomfortable for me to ask alone for a phone to make a call, considering that the people in Indonesia offered to share their internet hotspot right away.

The resulting boredom:

Due to the loneliness, I didn't really go out much and spent many days in the apartment. Who wants to do things alone?! My days were often super dull and boring, and the highlight of the day consisted of a way too expensive coffee from the nearest Starbucks.. it really doesn't bring back any nice memories..

As you can see from the dates, I was able to visit the cities in just one day. Of course, you can spend more time in them, but to see the most, the time was enough.

Business, business, business..:

As I said before, people didn't seem to be very interested in others and weren't particularly open to getting to know new people. This was also due to all the work! In California lies the well-known Silicon Valley, which is famous for the many hard-working people. Linh showed me many things, for example, she took me to the Paypal headquarters and also to her office. It was crazy to see so many desks at once, but when you looked at the people sitting behind them, it didn't exactly look like they were enjoying themselves at work. I also find it crazy how much Linh was working! I really admire her for what she has achieved in her life alone: studies, work, car, apartment, and so on.. all from scratch! But whether it's worth it for me to work so much and have hardly any free time, just for a Mercedes and a study at Stanford University?! Hmm.. I don't think so. Everyone can choose their own life, but it opened my eyes again to what I personally don't want. Rather less money, but be happier!

All in all, I don't want to say too many words about California. Personally, I didn't like it very much, and it is definitely the place that I liked the least so far. I would advise anyone to save the money and travel somewhere else because there are so many more beautiful places in the world that are also much cheaper, and you can have a much better time!

It was cool to see all of it, but it wasn't really worth it. At the end of the 2 weeks, I was really counting the hours until my flight to Mexico, I was so bored! But well.. that's my opinion. There are probably many who see it differently. After all, it also depends a lot on who you're traveling with, and in that regard, I really had bad luck.

Mexico enchanted me from the first moment onwards and made up for those two weeks. So stay tuned for the next post!

Conclusion: my rosyworld in the two weeks in California wasn't quite so rosy, and the "American Dream" was more of an "American Nightmare" at this point, but I have learned from it and become wiser again! Besides, not everything was terrible, some beautiful, impressive, and fascinating pictures were taken!

Or not?!